Page 80 of Rival Hearts

“Lila and Trent called. It’s awful. It’s so fucking awful.” He squeezed me tighter.

Inexplicably, Lila had been the first one I’d called when David delivered the news. My mother or Tyler or Emily would have been the logical choices, but I couldn’t bear to say the words aloud. David had offered, but I hadn’t known how to organize my thoughts.

This all had to be a mistake. A dozen times, I’d opened my mouth to tell David he had to be wrong. Dad couldn’t be dead. I’d seen him a few hours ago, and he’d been fine. We’d listened to Grady’s music together, marveling at his talent, at how funny life could be, how the bad things didn’t always stay bad.

I’d stared at David who reminded me of Dad in age, height, and that doctorly way he carried himself. My mouth had kept opening and closing, a fish suffocating, and no words had come out.

My father. My dad. Daddy.

The numbness spun, attaching like the stickiest web. I’d called Lila, and with panic in her voice, Lila had said she’d call everyone else. A testament to our friendship, she’d known everyone else included Grady, and Trent was the best person to get him here.

The next person to arrive was Lila, and she looked how I felt, as though she’d spent hours ugly crying. I hadn’t shed a tear. Without a word, Lila turned our two-person hug into a three-person one by embracing me and Grady. We’d stood like that for a long time before my mother arrived, who’d been out of town shopping, then Emily, then Tyler, and finally Trent. Each time I saw the reality of Dad’s death hit a family member, a piece of my heart ripped. I clung to Grady, letting his strength seep into me. He took all my pain and confusion, and he absorbed it, never telling me to be strong or trying to make the awfulness less awful.

I listened at the hospital while my mother made arrangements with one of the local funeral homes over the phone. We hadto go to the funeral parlor tomorrow to form a plan. For the first time, I was a reluctant organizer. No matter how I turned my father’s death around, it made no sense. While Mom talked about the things that needed to be done, I tuned out, tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. A part of me admired Mom’s bravery, her composure, and I hated her for it too. Organizing was Mom’s way to cope in a crisis—the lawyer in her liked order and structure. I was usually like that too. This time, I wanted to avoid, avoid, avoid. But there was nowhere to hide.

I left my car in the hospital parking lot, and Grady drove us in his truck to my parents’ sweeping brick two-story house. Except my childhood home wasn’t my parents’ house anymore. From now on, it would be my mother’s house. All these little injustices hit one after another.

We sat on the couches in the warm, wood-infused open-concept living room, and everywhere I looked I saw my father. He was on the walls in photos from our childhood right up until a few weeks ago when we’d had fall family photos done. His gym bag was by the door. His messy doctor scrawl was across the whiteboard my parents used to communicate with each other. When I glanced at the recliner, I could imagine him sitting there, the outline of his body, a grin on his face.

He was writ large in the house.

Time would erase his presence.

I couldn’t bear for him to be gone. I didn’t know how to bear his absence, the erosion of his presence in this house, in our life.

Beside me, Grady squeezed my knee as though sensing my shifting mood. The night passed in a blur of conversations happening around me as my siblings and Mom came to terms with Dad’s death. A brain aneurysm. He never stood a chance.

When it got so late everyone seemed to fuse to the couches, Mom suggested we sleep there. I couldn’t stomach the thoughtof waking up and knowing Dad would never be in the house again.

Instead, I turned to Grady with pleading eyes, and he used his dogs as an excuse to get us out of there.

In the truck, we rode in silence for a while before he smoothed my hair, drawing my attention. “I know how hard this is. Cry. Don’t cry. But you gotta let yourself feel his absence, Maggie.” He pressed the heel of his hand to his chest. “You gotta let yourself live in the awfulness for a while, or the awfulness goes on for too long.”

Tears flooded my eyes, and I blinked them away. A few stray tears trickled down my cheeks. “How do people survive this? How do people lose a parent and keep going as if part of their world hasn’t come to an end?”

He glanced at me as he pulled into his driveway. Half turning in his seat, he wiped my tears with his thumbs and cradled my face. “I don’t think any of us survive it unscathed. We carry the wound for the rest of our lives. But the more time that passes, the less the weight feels like it’s going to crush you. Grief won’t crush you, Maggie. Okay? I won’t let it crush you.”

I stared into his deep brown eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

He shook his head, and his brow creased. His thumbs brushed away the tears that kept falling. “Sorry about what?”

“That I never knew, that I never understood how awful it must have been for you, all these years, without your dad.”

He swallowed and our foreheads touched. “Your dad was there the night my dad died.”

Just the mention of him made my heart constrict. “He was?”

“He was the doctor on call, and he sat with me while I waited for my turn to say goodbye. I loved your dad from that moment on. He saved me from myself more than once.” There were tears in his eyes now. “Don’t ever be sorry you didn’t know, Maggie May,” his voice was gruff. “I wish you still didn’t know.”

My throat closed up, a sob threatening to burst forth. I tried to swallow the grief, think of something else. But each time my gaze met Grady’s, I saw the two men I loved most in the world sitting side-by-side in the same hospital waiting room I’d been in today, one young, one old, having no idea how their lives would intersect in the years to come.

“He loved us so hard.” A half sob escaped me. Tears filled my eyes and blurred my view of Grady. “He knew what it was like to lose a dad.”

“He did.” His voice was thick with tears, and the moonlight caught the glint of moisture on his cheeks before he could wipe them away.

The silence stretched between us, filled with all the things we could say to each other. But I couldn’t handle any confessions, wasn’t sure I had the language to express the grief welling up, swirling around my chest, hardening into something solid and substantial, and far too heavy to accept.

“Can we go in? I don’t want to talk anymore. I don’t want to think anymore.” I rubbed my face, exhaustion settling like a cloak.

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